Skip to main content

2014 Winter Olympics

See All Stories
Site default logo image

Tim Cook nominated Time Person of the Year finalist after huge product introductions/coming out publicly

Tim-cook-time-person of the year

Time has posted its Finalists for Person of the Year today and Apple’s CEO Tim Cook it on the list. Time credits the Alabama native for introducing a number of new products as well as coming out as the first openly gay Fortune 500 CEO.

Tim Cook, who introduced Apple’s iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Apple Watch, and Apple Pay this year, and whose decision to come out made him the first openly gay Fortune 500 CEO.

Other nominees (that don’t necessarily conform to “person” moniker) include:

  • The Ferguson protesters, who took to the streets in August following the fatal shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old by a white police officer, and again in November when a grand jury declined to indict the officer in the killing.
  • The Ebola caregivers, who are still fighting the biggest Ebola outbreak in history, that has so far taken the lives of nearly7,000 people in West Africa.
  • Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who has remained in the headlines throughout this year, from his country’s stewardship of the Winter Olympics in Sochi to its annexation of Crimea, and its role in the ongoing civil strife in eastern Ukraine.
  • Taylor Swift, one of the world’s top-selling pop artists, who this year shook up the music industry by pulling her music from streaming service Spotify, which she believes should compensate artists more.
  • Jack Ma, an English teacher turned founder and CEO of Alibaba, the Chinese e-commerce giant which debuted a $25 billion IPO.
  • Masoud Barzani, the acting president of the Iraqi Kurdish Region since 2005, who has deftly threaded the region’s push for independence with the ongoing fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria.
  • Roger Goodell, the National Football League commissioner whose leadership has been under great scrutiny this year as the league dealt with public incidents of domestic abuse by players such as Ray Rice, among other controversies.